same, have identical nutritional value, and are equally healthful, a majority still prefer the
organic fruit. Even the producers of beer have found that they can increase sales by putting
“All Natural” or “No Preservatives” on the label.
The deep resistance to the demystification of expertise is illustrated by the reaction of
the European wine community to Ashenfelter’s formula for predicting the price of
Bordeaux wines. Ashenfelter’s formula answered a prayer: one might thus have expected
that wine lovers everywhere would be grateful to him for demonstrably improving their
ability to identify the wines that later would be good. Not so. The response in French wine
circles, wrote
The New York Times
, ranged “somewhere between violent and hysterical.”
Ashenfelter reports that one oenophile called his findings “ludicrous and absurd.” Another
scoffed, “It is like judging movies without actually seeing them.”
The prejudice against algorithms is magnified when the decisions are consequential.
Meehl remarked, “I do not quite know how to alleviate the horror some clinicians seem to
experience when they envisage a treatable case being denied treatment because a ‘blind,
mechanical’ equation misclassifies him.” In contrast, Meehl and other proponents of
algorithms have argued strongly that it is unethical to rely on intuitive judgments for
important decisions if an algorithm is available that will make fewer mistakes. Their
rational argument is compelling, but it runs against a stubborn psychological reality: for
most people, the cause of a mistake matters. The story of a child dying because an
algorithm made a mistake is more poignant than the story of the same tragedy occurring as
a result of human error, and the difference in emotional intensity is readily translated into
a moral preference.
Fortunately, the hostility to algorithms will probably soften as their role in everyday
life continues to expand. Looking for books or music we might enjoy, we appreciate
recommendations generated by soft ware. We take it for granted that decisions about credit
limits are made without the direct intervention of any human judgment. We are
increasingly exposed to guidelines that have the form of simple algorithms, such as the
ratio of good and bad cholesterol levels we should strive to attain. The public is now well
aware that formulas may do better than humans in some critical decisions in the world of
sports: how much a professional team should pay for particular rookie players, or when to
punt on fourth down. The expanding list of tasks that are assigned to algorithms should
eventually reduce the discomfort that most people feel when they first encounter the
pattern of results that Meehl described in his disturbing little book.
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